In plain words
Eliot went on researching this thing called saṃskṛti. Having worked at it and worked at it, at long last he summed it up in one short sentence. Today we have lost our culture. Once the path of life is lost, what is life for any longer?
Life is a challenge, meet it Life is a game, play it Life is a dream, realise it Life is love, enjoy it.
We must know all things. Only after knowing all things can we nourish the good.
When one does not know oneself, what use is it to know everything?
Students! We take the word awareness to mean knowing something or other. Knowing a little of this and a little of that is not awareness. We must know the whole.
Pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidaṃ pūrṇātpūrṇamudacyate pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate.
We must know fully. (The handkerchief.) Holding all of this bunched in the hand, we say what it is: piece of cloth. This is not knowing it. We must open it out. What is this? Kerchief! That is awareness. Full understanding alone is called awareness. Today people do not come to full understanding. Knowing some little thing, we strut about as if we knew everything. This precisely is the great failing in the children of today. They think, ‘I know everything.’ They know everything; but who they themselves are, they do not know. When that is not known, what use is it to know everything? If someone says, ‘I know everything; tell me who I am,’ then, ‘What a madman, this fellow!’ people think.